Calling Data Center Hackers! Test your skills at Open Compute's 3rd Hackathon Jan 28-29

Many data centers have a hack or two or more.

In modern computing terminology, a kludge (or often a "hack") is a solution to a problem, doing a task, or fixing a system that is inefficient, inelegant, or even unfathomable, but which nevertheless (more or less) works. To kludge around something is to avoid a bug or some difficult condition by building a kludge, perhaps relying on properties of the bug itself to assure proper operation. It is somewhat similar in spirit to aworkaround, only without the grace. A kludge is often used to change the behavior of a system after it is finished, without having to make fundamental changes. Sometimes the kludge is introduced in order to keep backwards compatibility, but often it is simply introduced because the kludge is an easier alternative. That something was often originally a crock, which is why it must now be hacked to make it work. Note that a hack might be a kludge, but that 'hack' could be, at least in computing, ironic praise, for a quick fix solution to a frustrating problem.[10]

The folks at Open Compute have figured out that Hacks are the reality of data center operations and sharing your hacks help them get better.

Here is the invite to the event on Jan 28-29, 2014.

Open Compute Hackathon III

registration@opencompute.org

Tuesday, January 28, 2014 at 12:00 PM - Wednesday, January 29, 2014 at 12:00 PM (CST)

San Jose, CA
Open Compute Hackathon III
 

Event Details

Have a great idea for innovating data center technologies or want to hack on hardware to seed your company?  Then join us for our third hardware hackathon at the upcoming Open Compute Summit, January 28 - 29, 2013 in San Jose, California. 

We will have cash prizes to help you seed your initial idea. In addition to the prize money, the Open Compute Foundation is partnering with a team of angel investors and venture capitalists who will work with you to formulate your initial idea into a business plan.

Speaking at Wavefront Wireless Summit, Vancouver Feb 5, 2014

Mobile solutions is where I spend the most of my time developing new systems. The back end is the cloud.  HTML5 is the browser for PC or Tablet.  The Samsung Galaxy Note is our preferred hardware device.  Big Data and Analytics are features.  Social is there as well.  We launched on Jan 13, 2014 and for now I don’t plan on discussing any specifics as I don’t think I can write as freely if I am trying to promote a for profit service on the same blog.  What our service does is known by a few of the readers of this blog, but not many.

What I do like to discuss is ideas I figure out and are worth sharing.  GigaOm’s David Card, VP of Research invited me to speak at the Wavefront Wireless Summit on Feb 5, 2014.  Given our service was going live and I now spend time in operations in Seattle and SF it is hard to find time for conferences.  But, given the conference is all about Mobile and Wireless and the event is Vancouver (a 3 hr drive from Redmond, WA) I decided to confirm my attendance. 

Here is the event.

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The session I am speaking on is this one.

 

What’s Real at the Nexus of Forces: Mobile, social, data, cloud?

This time, change is coming from four directions. Post-web computing harnesses disruptive technologies in the cloud and on mobile devices, and puts social media and big data to work. While consumer-driven tech leaks into the enterprise, line of business management and IT must collaborate to get the most of these four critical technologies. But hold off the hype, and keep the futurists focused: this session will zero in on what’s realistic in the next 12-24 months. What’s pie-in-the-sky and what’s driving 12-24 month decisions that can show payoff?

Oh, didn’t realize that M2M is part of the conference too.

 

M2M Summit – Machine-to-Machine technologies are changing the way we do business. Learn from the top players in the M2M ecosystem at this marquee event.

  • M2M brings together people, process, data and things to generate big data and new capabilities
  • Consumer applications – the next wave of opportunity
  • Solving industry specific problems: How is M2M transforming Canada’s core industries?
  • The global evolution of standards & specifications
  • Security – a technologist’s look at the safe guards and threats in M2M
  • The maker movement – where are the business opportunities?

Forgot to mention our service supports M2M as well.   

No wonder I have a hard time with an elevator pitch.  Our service is a mobile, cloud, HTML5, big data, social, M2M, industrial operations Platform. :-)

So glad my schedule works out to go to Wavefront Wireless Summit

OCP Summit 2014, people I am looking forward to seeing

From a green data center perspective the Open Compute Summit is where I see a lot of people that are good to connect with.

Here are some of the people I am looking forward to catching up with.

There is a Renewable Energy Discussion.

"Exploring Renewable Energy Solutions for Datacenters" - Bill Weihl (Manager of Energy Efficiency and Sustainability, Facebook); Vince Van Son (Data Center Energy Manager, Facebook); Gary Cook (Senior Policy Analyst, Greenpeace); Rob Bernard (Chief Environmental Strategist, Microsoft); Melissa Gray (Senior Director of Sustainability, Rackspace)

Jon Koomey has a panel.

"Bringing Integrated Design, Mass Production, and Learning by Doing to the Datacenter Industry" - Jon Koomey (Research Fellow, Stanford University); others to be announced

I just moderated a webinar with LSI and met Greg Huff.

To be announced - Greg Huff (CTO, LSI)

The Open Networking discussion has familiar names.

"Opening Up Network Hardware" - Najam Ahmad (Director, Infrastructure, Facebook); JR Rivers (Co-founder and CEO, Cumulus Networks); Martin Casado (Chief Architect, Networking, VMware); Matthew Liste, (Managing Director, Core Infrastructure Platform, Goldman Sachs); Dave Maltz (Microsoft)

And it will be interesting what Tom Furlong gives as his DCIM update since DatacenterDynamics where he shared his DCIM vision.

"Update on Facebook's DCIM Solution"- Tom Furlong (VP, Infrastructure, Facebook)

Photo tags suck, solving the problem with patience

Whenever you add photos to a service people automatically assume tagging will be a feature.  I don’t know about you, but I think photo tags suck.  My brain isn’t well enough organized to be like a database, remembering all the tags I’ve used in the past and which images I applied them to.  So, for now no photo tagging.

Even if you had perfect tagging then you would run into semantic problems when you are in a group.  A word means one thing to me and means a different thing to others yet we use the same word.

This weekend I was taking photos of the kids getting ski race medals and after taking a picture with the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 app it would prompt me to tag the image.  I defaulted to date as I found after I took a picture the last thing I wanted to do is tag an image and type.  Seems really stupid that my kids are smiling in the moment and I would have my head down pecking on my phone.  Doing it later is too painful, and you are spending time sharing the photos with family and friends.

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This experience confirmed a better way to tag that came from a friend who was using a new photo based service and made an awesome point.  Sorry not sharing the idea. It is too good.  Especially since I have been staring at this problem for over 2 years.  With patience and identifying that photo tagging sucks, finding a better way is the reward for the years of patience.

Photo tagging is important enough that Facebook was granted a patent for photo tagging.

Facebook Wins Patents For Tagging in Photos, Other Digital Media

•May 17th, 2011
Facebook, Photos, Search,VirtualGoods

Tagging was arguably the feature that made Facebook the biggest photo site in the world and seeded the idea for creating the platform.

Now the company has finally won a patent for it.

Nearly five years after the company originally filed for the invention, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office gave Facebook a patent protecting the ability to select a region in a piece of media (like a photo or video) and associate people or other entities with it. Mark Zuckerberg, longtime designer-turned-product architect Aaron Sittig and former Facebook engineer Scott Marlette were credited as inventors.

In the article Zuckerberg is referenced for his early work on tagging.
 
Zuckerberg has long talked about photo tagging as the innovation that helped him and other early Facebook employees initially conceive of the idea for the platform. The company did a competitive analysis of all other photo products out on the web and while Facebook didn’t offer features like high resolution or printing, it still outcompeted rivals simply because it centered its product around people, and not around technical capabilities. Last year the company said it was seeing more than 100 million photo uploads a day. It has not updated that statistic since.

Zuckerberg has long talked about photo tagging as the innovation that helped him and other early Facebook employees initially conceive of the idea for the platform. The company did a competitive analysis of all other photo products out on the web and while Facebook didn’t offer features like high resolution or printing, it still outcompeted rivals simply because it centered its product around people, and not around technical capabilities. Last year the company said it was seeing more than 100 million photo uploads a day. It has not updated that statistic since.